Focus on the Feet
Mar. 20th, 2022 12:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
phantomtomatoI am in the process of writing a story that has been in the works for a while—unfortunately, months of lead-time is becoming a bit of a habit for me—and which has brought to the fore questions about how I want to use kink in fic. Particularly, I want Albus Dumbledore, in a romance with Tom Riddle, to feel viscerally aroused by Tom’s body, his youth in decline as he suffers from sickness, and I made the choice that body-part kinks (armpit, hand, foot) would be the most interesting way to convey that.
But it is me, and I would never be satisfied with something less than hours of introspection about the nature of a thing before doing it, and so I want to talk about a meta essay I recently read.
Erotic Focus, by thingswithwings ahead of 2012’s kink bingo, balances a few plates. It’s long, fair warning, at about 4k words. It’s a primer for fest participants, it’s a philosophical essay, it’s over-wrought navel-gazing, it’s a treatise on fannish identity. I don’t resonate with every sentiment, but I endorse reading it, if the premise sounds interesting.
The essay dives into the particulars of what it means for a thing to be erotic, and what it means for a thing to be the focus of a story. I want to discuss the ‘focus’ half, which was my favorite of the two, though I’ll wander through kink on my way there.
In particular, I think many of us have a pre-existing sense of what we find erotic, and how we define the erotic experiences we’re looking for in fic that we read and write. I would suggest that almost everyone benefits from thinking more closely about that, finding clear and distinct language to discuss what can be a sensitive concept, but in the case of my Tom/Albus pairing, I have that element that is meant to be erotic quite set: the eroticism comes from Albus’ fetishes for three defined parts of Tom’s body.
Focus is more nebulous. I’ve wondered, lately, what it takes to “justify” describing a work as kinky—if a fic is 20k words and a kink shows up in one of three sex scenes, is that sufficient? Should a kink be present in all of the sex scenes, or some minimum proportion of the words? Is it just never appropriate to tag a kink (as a measure of kink-centricity) in something other than PWP, or in a fic where it isn’t the primary subject of the narrative?
Tagging practices are as varied as authors, so of course there’s no single correct answer, which is where I turn to this meta. This essay says:
I want to hedge less than this author. I don’t think these connections are strange or unusual—no, not even for that kink or that emotion or that culture, whichever jumps to your mind. In the most fundamental distillation of writing kink, purely for titillation, it’s the connection between kink-as-concept (these are words on a page) and physical arousal. Narrative complexity might add layers of allegory to that, but I agree with the author when they write that “kink makes those connections apparent.” (Emphasis in original.) Kink is used to draw the mind to the point of focus, whether that is “this story is erotica” or “Albus views Tom as an object.”
And, the meta goes on to say, kink can grab focus regardless of whether the characters within the story enjoy or are even aware of the kinks they act out. I particularly love the example of whump fic that is described here, that whump fic is the audience kinking on non-consensual pain, which the character likely does not experience as erotic. Certainly, my Tom has no particular fondness for his physically-degrading body; Albus’ loving descriptions of it are appealing to him, and perhaps to the reader, but a Tom with agency over his own sexual expression would choose none of this.
I appreciate finding this essay at this moment because it’s a time when I am writing for new erotic sensibilites. That’s left me less certain of my work! I want it to be erotically fulfilling, though I as an audience am not inherently compelled by this particular set of kinks. So I turn to aspects of eroticism beyond the boundaries of sex, in part, and build elements of what I find sexy into the scenes between Tom and Albus. But what helps most is understanding that the focus, to borrow the terms of this meta, is in how Albus enjoys these kinks.
I can work with that. I can write towards Albus’ fulfillment.
It gives me a broader sense of range, as well. In the past, I’ve written many sex scenes that were erotically unfulfilling to me, but I have often kept them brief. That limits how much I use kink in long-form stories where sex is a central and recurring element. I don’t want that! I want to enjoy writing kinks of all sorts, as big and small parts of the narrative, and I want them to be engaging to read. I’ll carry forward these thoughts on focus, and on how the eroticism of a kink might be written to appeal to a character, and hopefully do more work that pushes the boundaries of how I handle sex.
To close up, I’ll pause on the parallel made between fannishness and kinkiness—the author compares the two as things about which a person might feel shame, which are treated as non-normative and too intense. I don’t love to frame fannishness (or kinkiness) as embarrassing things, even briefly for the purposes of pushing back against that, but I’ll use this connection to say that I think there’s always more room for eroticism (sex, kink, any of it) in fanwork. I know there is a great deal of embarrassment among fans for liking and creating explicit or kinky works. I try to treat my own feelings of shame like a writing challenge: write the very thing about which I am uncertain and confront it, normalize it in my own process, and let go of that shame.
Is this all a very long-winded introspection about putting a foot fetish tag on a fic? I mean, probably. I’m excited when I get close to completing one of my creative goals. I will take the framing of kink as the combination of eroticism and focus into my writing going forward, and I hope that it leads me to new ideas that I could not have written otherwise.
But it is me, and I would never be satisfied with something less than hours of introspection about the nature of a thing before doing it, and so I want to talk about a meta essay I recently read.
Erotic Focus, by thingswithwings ahead of 2012’s kink bingo, balances a few plates. It’s long, fair warning, at about 4k words. It’s a primer for fest participants, it’s a philosophical essay, it’s over-wrought navel-gazing, it’s a treatise on fannish identity. I don’t resonate with every sentiment, but I endorse reading it, if the premise sounds interesting.
The essay dives into the particulars of what it means for a thing to be erotic, and what it means for a thing to be the focus of a story. I want to discuss the ‘focus’ half, which was my favorite of the two, though I’ll wander through kink on my way there.
In particular, I think many of us have a pre-existing sense of what we find erotic, and how we define the erotic experiences we’re looking for in fic that we read and write. I would suggest that almost everyone benefits from thinking more closely about that, finding clear and distinct language to discuss what can be a sensitive concept, but in the case of my Tom/Albus pairing, I have that element that is meant to be erotic quite set: the eroticism comes from Albus’ fetishes for three defined parts of Tom’s body.
Focus is more nebulous. I’ve wondered, lately, what it takes to “justify” describing a work as kinky—if a fic is 20k words and a kink shows up in one of three sex scenes, is that sufficient? Should a kink be present in all of the sex scenes, or some minimum proportion of the words? Is it just never appropriate to tag a kink (as a measure of kink-centricity) in something other than PWP, or in a fic where it isn’t the primary subject of the narrative?
Tagging practices are as varied as authors, so of course there’s no single correct answer, which is where I turn to this meta. This essay says:
[K]ink can often be about making strange or unusual connections between culture, body, and mind, between physical feelings and emotional reactions and the cultural context in which those feelings and reactions happen.
I want to hedge less than this author. I don’t think these connections are strange or unusual—no, not even for that kink or that emotion or that culture, whichever jumps to your mind. In the most fundamental distillation of writing kink, purely for titillation, it’s the connection between kink-as-concept (these are words on a page) and physical arousal. Narrative complexity might add layers of allegory to that, but I agree with the author when they write that “kink makes those connections apparent.” (Emphasis in original.) Kink is used to draw the mind to the point of focus, whether that is “this story is erotica” or “Albus views Tom as an object.”
And, the meta goes on to say, kink can grab focus regardless of whether the characters within the story enjoy or are even aware of the kinks they act out. I particularly love the example of whump fic that is described here, that whump fic is the audience kinking on non-consensual pain, which the character likely does not experience as erotic. Certainly, my Tom has no particular fondness for his physically-degrading body; Albus’ loving descriptions of it are appealing to him, and perhaps to the reader, but a Tom with agency over his own sexual expression would choose none of this.
I appreciate finding this essay at this moment because it’s a time when I am writing for new erotic sensibilites. That’s left me less certain of my work! I want it to be erotically fulfilling, though I as an audience am not inherently compelled by this particular set of kinks. So I turn to aspects of eroticism beyond the boundaries of sex, in part, and build elements of what I find sexy into the scenes between Tom and Albus. But what helps most is understanding that the focus, to borrow the terms of this meta, is in how Albus enjoys these kinks.
I can work with that. I can write towards Albus’ fulfillment.
It gives me a broader sense of range, as well. In the past, I’ve written many sex scenes that were erotically unfulfilling to me, but I have often kept them brief. That limits how much I use kink in long-form stories where sex is a central and recurring element. I don’t want that! I want to enjoy writing kinks of all sorts, as big and small parts of the narrative, and I want them to be engaging to read. I’ll carry forward these thoughts on focus, and on how the eroticism of a kink might be written to appeal to a character, and hopefully do more work that pushes the boundaries of how I handle sex.
To close up, I’ll pause on the parallel made between fannishness and kinkiness—the author compares the two as things about which a person might feel shame, which are treated as non-normative and too intense. I don’t love to frame fannishness (or kinkiness) as embarrassing things, even briefly for the purposes of pushing back against that, but I’ll use this connection to say that I think there’s always more room for eroticism (sex, kink, any of it) in fanwork. I know there is a great deal of embarrassment among fans for liking and creating explicit or kinky works. I try to treat my own feelings of shame like a writing challenge: write the very thing about which I am uncertain and confront it, normalize it in my own process, and let go of that shame.
Is this all a very long-winded introspection about putting a foot fetish tag on a fic? I mean, probably. I’m excited when I get close to completing one of my creative goals. I will take the framing of kink as the combination of eroticism and focus into my writing going forward, and I hope that it leads me to new ideas that I could not have written otherwise.
